Alright, I’m not trying to be a Blizzard/corporate shill or anything, but this is all extreme hyperbole.
Only legislation will fix this. You can’t shop your way out of it.
You can just not shop though. So many video games that have in-game shops just sell cosmetic items there, items that don’t affect gameplay whatsoever. You don’t have to buy them. If you really don’t like in-game shops, regardless of what’s sold in them, you don’t have to play the game. There are an absolute ass-load of very good video games out there right now, more than ever in the history of video gaming. Go play one of those. Go install one of the poor games in your Steam library you bought during a sale 4 years ago and never touched.
What legislation are you even proposing? Banning all in-game purchases? That seems extreme, and ill advised. Gems like Battlebits would have never grown to the level they did without people buying the supporter packs they made available in their shop and on Steam. There are tons of games that do in-game transactions fairly and ethically, and outlawing them would make it basically impossible for small indie studios to make any money off of their games. Don’t let the greedy monsters ruin it for everyone else, just stop playing the greedy monsters’ games.
‘Just don’t buy it!’ I’m already not-buying it, as hard as I can. This abuse is still creeping into more games, every day, because it makes obscene money. Funny how that works, huh? And it’s making all those games objectively less enjoyable, because revenue isn’t maximized if people are having fun for free. (Or for only $70. Peasants.)
‘It’s just cosmetics!’ While I’m thrilled that lootboxes are finally a dirty word, cosmetics are the exact same abuse, but gentler. You are made to want a thing. It is kept from you. They charge money. For physical goods, that’s whatever, but inside a video game that’s indistinguishable from putting a price tag on soccer goals, or charging Warhammer players to reload their imaginary plastic guns. Using social mechanisms instead of gameplay mechanisms for that “want” is identical bullshit. Like charging Warhammer players to paint their guys blue… with their own paint… after they bought the little plastic men.
‘Other games exist!’ So a growing scam providing half of all industry revenue must be fine. I guess we’re safe forever.
‘What legislation do you even want?’ Banning all in-game purchases. Oh hey, you actually answered this one correctly. Almost like I made the point pretty dang clear. “Gems” was a deeply unfortunate choice of term, since selling gems is what ruined mobile gaming. It’s a neat trick, making you pay for things that don’t cost them any money. This shit is the same brazen abuse, complexed up and disguisified, so people go ‘what’s wrong with paying $500 to a puzzle game?’
There is no ethical form of charging money inside a video game.
Games make you value worthless things. That’s how games work. That’s what makes them games. They provide satisfying rewards for tractable obstacles, so your brain squirts the happy juice. Inserting a tollbooth in the middle is abusing your brain’s sloppy grasp of value. There is a fundamental disconnect between the utility of something in fiction, and in real life - but under certain circumstances you can ignore that and enjoyably freak out over losing souls or finding loot.
These games maximize confusion between that fiction and real life. They exploit psychology to make you irrationally equate whateverthefuck they’re pushing with real-world money value. Quick, make a choice! It’s going away tomorrow! They’re all gonna laugh at you! It’s the difference between a horror movie, which is ooh so scary ha ha, and propaganda that makes you genuinely fear for your life. The effects are not exploited for fun - just profit. If you are miserable and addicted and still giving them money, great.
Greedy monsters will not be stopped unless we ban this entire business model. They’re the only reason it exists. They’re the ones using it as intended.
Greedy monsters will not be stopped unless we ban this entire business model.
Banning the business model will kill indie developers, and make the scale of AAA the only way to make profit on video games.
Maybe instead of going straight to the ban hammer, we should take a look at games that are responsibly/ethically monetized, and reward those strategies in order to push people towards them, along with punishing the unethical practices (maybe with bans, but also maybe let’s start with steep fines).
Like, video games (software products/services in general, really) are one of the most unregulated things on the market right now. Do you not see how jumping straight to bans is maybe an overreaction, and that a healthy middle ground may exist? I get that microtransactions are creeping into more and more areas, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively new practice that the slow legal process hasn’t had time to react to yet.
cosmetics are the exact same abuse, but gentler. You are made to want a thing. It is kept from you. They charge money. For physical goods, that’s whatever, but inside a video game that’s indistinguishable from putting a price tag on soccer goals, or charging Warhammer players to reload their imaginary plastic guns.
These comparisons makes me think you don’t understand how cosmetic items are created. They don’t just hit a button and autogenerate these things, there’s actual artists, animators, and developers that have to put in real man hours to create those items, add them to the game, and make sure they work. It’s closer to paying an artist for a print of one of their works, than “putting a price tag on soccer goals” or “charging Warhammer players to reload their plastic guns”. And look, we can argue about worth and fair prices all day, but to get there, you need to admit that it takes a non-zero amount of work to create an in-game cosmetic item, and someone is being paid for that effort.
Inserting a tollbooth in the middle is abusing your brain’s sloppy grasp of value.
I don’t disagree with you here. But most of the time, at least in the games I have experience with, there is no tollbooth. There’s a backroom with a guy behind a digital counter, selling digital trinkets. The digital trinkets have no affect on my ability to overcome the games’ tractable obstacles, no impediment to my brain squirting the happy juice when I finally beat the digital bad guy and loot his digital treasure chest. I don’t even have to go into the digital back room if I don’t want to. I can completely forget it even exists and my experience is unchanged.
They exploit psychology to make you irrationally equate whateverthefuck they’re pushing with real-world money value. Quick, make a choice! It’s going away tomorrow! They’re all gonna laugh at you!
Maybe this is the difference, the root of it. This doesn’t work on me. Does it work on you? Is that why I think microtransactions are not that big a deal, and you disagree so extremely? Maybe, and maybe I need to have more empathy and recognize how lucky I am that this is a problem that just doesn’t affect me very much. I’m open to that conclusion, at which point, maybe I’d agree with you that bans are in order, if corporations are effectively waging psychological warfare on its customers. At that point it does seem like a bannable offense.
‘Try indie games, they don’t do this… wait no, banning this will kill indie games!’
‘Don’t go straight to a solution, we’ve only let this infect half the industry over one little decade.’
‘What about the ethical versions of this innately unethical scam?’
‘There’s basically no regulation whatsoever, so let’s try tiny ineffectual steps against multi-billion-dollar greed.’
‘Uh excuse me, making a virtual hat doesn’t take literally zero effort, so they only closely resemble the outright scam you’re condemning.’
‘I’ve never had cosmetics dangled enticingly or shoved in my face, or at least I don’t know what that looks like.’
The worst part is, this is easily one of the better interactions on this topic. There’s something about “just sell games, god dammit” that makes people reach for the most ridiculous objections. Plucky little indie title Genshin Impact desperately needs this! Why not chase shifting trends in specific money-extraction techniques, with brisk and responsive congressional action? We’ve tried nothing and it’s worked so far, if we define working as nuh-uh it’s fine sometimes. Don’t I know that those $600 of tiny variations in onscreen pants took as much effort as ten entire games?
People:
This monetizes frustration.
The product only exists to needle you into paying more and more money. Fun is the bait on that hook. If you’re enjoying a game without constantly forking over more actual dollars - these fuckers think you’re a freeloader. They openly describe “hunting whales” and discuss creative new ways to slide the siphon into your wallet. How much have you spent so far? They don’t want you to think about it. What’s the dollar value of this thing priced in gil? They don’t want you to think about it. Is paying to “skip the grind” the reason there’s a disheartening grind to be skipped? Absofuckinglutely, but they definitely don’t want you to think about it.
Maximum revenue comes from addiction despite misery. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
If you meant anything else then you said all the wrong words. I’m not gonna expend more effort on a pile of nuh-uhs, just to rub your nose in how those are, in fact, the thrust of all the things you said, basically blow-by-blow. I’m only stretching a little bit to miss where you nitpicked outright price-gouging and infer you endorsed indie games.
You’re against banning this crap because you insist it can be ethical, and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow, and don’t I know how games are made?
‘Try indie games, they don’t do this… wait no, banning this will kill indie games!’
I never said indie games don’t have in-game transactions. In fact, I literally name an indie game that was monetarily successful in large part due to in-game transactions (Battlebits).
‘Don’t go straight to a solution, we’ve only let this infect half the industry over one little decade.’
I never said “don’t go straight to a solution”. I just suggested less-extreme solutions than “ban the practice completely” (fines, targeted bans).
‘What about the ethical versions of this innately unethical scam?’
You’re the one claiming that in-game transactions are innately unethical, not me. And if you think there are no exceptions to your hard-line stance then this conversation won’t go anywhere.
‘There’s basically no regulation whatsoever, so let’s try tiny ineffectual steps against multi-billion-dollar greed.’
You’re the one claiming my suggestion would be insignificant and ineffectual, when it’s been the standard practice in the business world for decades, and outright bans are left for extreme scenarios.
‘Uh excuse me, making a virtual hat doesn’t take literally zero effort, so they only closely resemble the outright scam you’re condemning.’
My point, which I understand to be correct because of my personal experiences with the gaming industry and colleagues that work in the industry, is that adding a cosmetic item to a video game takes a measurable amount of time and effort, which in turn costs money. Putting a price on a good (even a digital one) that requires time and effort to produce is not a scam, and I don’t know how much more clear I can make that.
Plucky little indie title Genshin Impact desperately needs this!
I’ve literally never mentioned Genshin Impact throughout the entire course of this conversation.
We’ve tried nothing and it’s worked so far, if we define working as nuh-uh it’s fine sometimes.
I’ve never claimed that we’ve tried nothing and it worked. I’ve literally admitted that there is a problem, especially with how large, greedy companies like Blizzard do things, and I suggested potential solutions. Again though, they aren’t the same as your solutions, so you’re dismissing them out of hand I guess.
Don’t I know that those $600 of tiny variations in onscreen pants took as much effort as ten entire games?
This statement is hyperbolic to the point of insult, and it’s very clear I haven’t suggested anything close to this.
I’m only stretching a little bit to miss where you nitpicked outright price-gouging and infer you endorsed indie games.
You’re stretching my words beyond all recognition, to the point where it’s becoming hard to figure out what you’re even referencing.
You’re against banning this crap because you insist it can be ethical, and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow, and don’t I know how games are made?
I’m against an outright ban because, as I’ve said from the start, that seems like an extreme overreaction, and yes, it would punish a ton of indie creators who implement ethical in-game transactions to help support their games. I don’t know what you mean by “and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow”. As I’ve said before, I’m in favor of punishing companies who abuse or are predatory with in-game transactions. I don’t want those companies to win. I believe they should be punished, at minimum in the form of fines, and targeted bans if the fines don’t work. I’ve said as much in my first couple messages to you. I’ve also never claimed that you don’t know how games are made. I’ve just called into question your understanding of the time and effort that goes into creating cosmetic items. That’s it.
Hopefully this makes it clear what I’ve been trying to say. Sorry for the original confusion I guess.
All of this is predatory. It’s a trick being played on you. How else do you make some normal-ass game cost thousands of dollars, and still have some idiots pay that? Smaller numbers don’t change anything. Using the trick to get less money is still tricking people out of money.
You’re the one claiming that in-game transactions are innately unethical, not me.
And that makes ‘but what about ethical uses?’ relevant to me, somehow. Like this conversation can ‘go somewhere’ if I’m condemning this entire practice as fundamentally dishonest exploitation of immutable human vulnerabilities, but you want to play whack-a-mole with specific expressions of that underlying abuse.
You’re the one claiming my suggestion would be insignificant and ineffectual, when it’s been the standard practice in the business world for decades, and outright bans are left for extreme scenarios.
Yes.
Oh, you think that’s a counter.
This is half the industry’s profits. That’s pretty fucking extreme. The premise beneath all forms is an abuse of predictable irrationality, much the same way as gambling. (And this abuse may outright involve gambling.)
Pitting any legislature’s ability to pin down and pick apart specific abusive practices, versus the gaming industry’s ability to mutate and adapt those abuses, is very plainly not gonna work. We spent so long bickering about lootboxes that lootboxes went away - and were replaced by even-more-profitable abuses, minus the few details that people recognize as exploitation. If it’s not pay-to-win and it’s not randomized, apparently people don’t give a shit if a “free” game has five thousand dollars worth of waifus and hats. Maybe we’ll fine the company for doing that, because that figure will totes mcgoats outweigh the literal billions they make every single year.
My point,
Which misses the point. ‘It deserves money somehow’ does not justify this.
You want money for a new thing? Sell it like regular. Horse Armor that shit. Tell people they can’t have the thing, until they give you money, and only then do you give them the thing. But that’s never what these products do! They’re selling you shit that’s already been added to the game. It goes in every copy. They add stuff, and declare some of it’s suuuper special, and expect five actual dollars to say you have it. Or five hundred. But always disguised as some made-up currency that’s seventeen to the dollar, so you can’t think too hard about how many meals this imaginary geegaw costs, and you can instantly blow that money inside the game. Y’know. Where the developer controls presentation, comparison, context, availability, and literally everything else including fuckin’ gravity. This is not an environment for rational consumer choices. This is an automated con job.
Would it help to point out, the games will often give you shit shit for free, if you play enough? Diablo especially will gladly take real money for additional whacks at a pinata that routinely gives you a few free whacks. Can you imagine asking for cash back instead? Like if some bullshit item is “worth” $30, can you even picture receiving a check from Activision-Blizzard-Microsoft-Atari-Kunkleman-Chevrolet, because you turned it back in? The number on that check is the true value of the thing.
This is the same ‘but games need revenue!’ excuse given to gems, and pay-to-win lootboxes, and… whatever you call being forced to wait half an hour or pay a dollar. No shit games cost money. That’s not an all-purpose excuse for how they take money! The problem is the business model!
I don’t know what you mean by “and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow”.
It means you think it would punish a ton of indie creators who do this shit, and somehow be a gift to abusive AAA crap - like Genshin Impact, my example. Actual quote: “Banning the business model will kill indie developers, and make the scale of AAA the only way to make profit on video games.”
My guy. Have you seen AAA games lately? They’re the assholes making billions off this bullshit. They’re the morons who can’t turn a profit, without this bullshit. Venture capitalist cult leaders keep gutting beloved studios and making them do “live service” shit, specifically to enable this stupid business model.
The overwhelming majority of indie games have neither the infrastructure nor the back bench necessary to even consider this crap. Your objections are built on the exception to an exception.
Alright, I’m not trying to be a Blizzard/corporate shill or anything, but this is all extreme hyperbole.
You can just not shop though. So many video games that have in-game shops just sell cosmetic items there, items that don’t affect gameplay whatsoever. You don’t have to buy them. If you really don’t like in-game shops, regardless of what’s sold in them, you don’t have to play the game. There are an absolute ass-load of very good video games out there right now, more than ever in the history of video gaming. Go play one of those. Go install one of the poor games in your Steam library you bought during a sale 4 years ago and never touched.
What legislation are you even proposing? Banning all in-game purchases? That seems extreme, and ill advised. Gems like Battlebits would have never grown to the level they did without people buying the supporter packs they made available in their shop and on Steam. There are tons of games that do in-game transactions fairly and ethically, and outlawing them would make it basically impossible for small indie studios to make any money off of their games. Don’t let the greedy monsters ruin it for everyone else, just stop playing the greedy monsters’ games.
I need a damn FAQ page for these replies.
‘Just don’t buy it!’ I’m already not-buying it, as hard as I can. This abuse is still creeping into more games, every day, because it makes obscene money. Funny how that works, huh? And it’s making all those games objectively less enjoyable, because revenue isn’t maximized if people are having fun for free. (Or for only $70. Peasants.)
‘It’s just cosmetics!’ While I’m thrilled that lootboxes are finally a dirty word, cosmetics are the exact same abuse, but gentler. You are made to want a thing. It is kept from you. They charge money. For physical goods, that’s whatever, but inside a video game that’s indistinguishable from putting a price tag on soccer goals, or charging Warhammer players to reload their imaginary plastic guns. Using social mechanisms instead of gameplay mechanisms for that “want” is identical bullshit. Like charging Warhammer players to paint their guys blue… with their own paint… after they bought the little plastic men.
‘Other games exist!’ So a growing scam providing half of all industry revenue must be fine. I guess we’re safe forever.
‘What legislation do you even want?’ Banning all in-game purchases. Oh hey, you actually answered this one correctly. Almost like I made the point pretty dang clear. “Gems” was a deeply unfortunate choice of term, since selling gems is what ruined mobile gaming. It’s a neat trick, making you pay for things that don’t cost them any money. This shit is the same brazen abuse, complexed up and disguisified, so people go ‘what’s wrong with paying $500 to a puzzle game?’
There is no ethical form of charging money inside a video game.
Games make you value worthless things. That’s how games work. That’s what makes them games. They provide satisfying rewards for tractable obstacles, so your brain squirts the happy juice. Inserting a tollbooth in the middle is abusing your brain’s sloppy grasp of value. There is a fundamental disconnect between the utility of something in fiction, and in real life - but under certain circumstances you can ignore that and enjoyably freak out over losing souls or finding loot.
These games maximize confusion between that fiction and real life. They exploit psychology to make you irrationally equate whateverthefuck they’re pushing with real-world money value. Quick, make a choice! It’s going away tomorrow! They’re all gonna laugh at you! It’s the difference between a horror movie, which is ooh so scary ha ha, and propaganda that makes you genuinely fear for your life. The effects are not exploited for fun - just profit. If you are miserable and addicted and still giving them money, great.
Greedy monsters will not be stopped unless we ban this entire business model. They’re the only reason it exists. They’re the ones using it as intended.
Banning the business model will kill indie developers, and make the scale of AAA the only way to make profit on video games.
Maybe instead of going straight to the ban hammer, we should take a look at games that are responsibly/ethically monetized, and reward those strategies in order to push people towards them, along with punishing the unethical practices (maybe with bans, but also maybe let’s start with steep fines).
Like, video games (software products/services in general, really) are one of the most unregulated things on the market right now. Do you not see how jumping straight to bans is maybe an overreaction, and that a healthy middle ground may exist? I get that microtransactions are creeping into more and more areas, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively new practice that the slow legal process hasn’t had time to react to yet.
These comparisons makes me think you don’t understand how cosmetic items are created. They don’t just hit a button and autogenerate these things, there’s actual artists, animators, and developers that have to put in real man hours to create those items, add them to the game, and make sure they work. It’s closer to paying an artist for a print of one of their works, than “putting a price tag on soccer goals” or “charging Warhammer players to reload their plastic guns”. And look, we can argue about worth and fair prices all day, but to get there, you need to admit that it takes a non-zero amount of work to create an in-game cosmetic item, and someone is being paid for that effort.
I don’t disagree with you here. But most of the time, at least in the games I have experience with, there is no tollbooth. There’s a backroom with a guy behind a digital counter, selling digital trinkets. The digital trinkets have no affect on my ability to overcome the games’ tractable obstacles, no impediment to my brain squirting the happy juice when I finally beat the digital bad guy and loot his digital treasure chest. I don’t even have to go into the digital back room if I don’t want to. I can completely forget it even exists and my experience is unchanged.
Maybe this is the difference, the root of it. This doesn’t work on me. Does it work on you? Is that why I think microtransactions are not that big a deal, and you disagree so extremely? Maybe, and maybe I need to have more empathy and recognize how lucky I am that this is a problem that just doesn’t affect me very much. I’m open to that conclusion, at which point, maybe I’d agree with you that bans are in order, if corporations are effectively waging psychological warfare on its customers. At that point it does seem like a bannable offense.
‘Try indie games, they don’t do this… wait no, banning this will kill indie games!’
‘Don’t go straight to a solution, we’ve only let this infect half the industry over one little decade.’
‘What about the ethical versions of this innately unethical scam?’
‘There’s basically no regulation whatsoever, so let’s try tiny ineffectual steps against multi-billion-dollar greed.’
‘Uh excuse me, making a virtual hat doesn’t take literally zero effort, so they only closely resemble the outright scam you’re condemning.’
‘I’ve never had cosmetics dangled enticingly or shoved in my face, or at least I don’t know what that looks like.’
The worst part is, this is easily one of the better interactions on this topic. There’s something about “just sell games, god dammit” that makes people reach for the most ridiculous objections. Plucky little indie title Genshin Impact desperately needs this! Why not chase shifting trends in specific money-extraction techniques, with brisk and responsive congressional action? We’ve tried nothing and it’s worked so far, if we define working as nuh-uh it’s fine sometimes. Don’t I know that those $600 of tiny variations in onscreen pants took as much effort as ten entire games?
People:
This monetizes frustration.
The product only exists to needle you into paying more and more money. Fun is the bait on that hook. If you’re enjoying a game without constantly forking over more actual dollars - these fuckers think you’re a freeloader. They openly describe “hunting whales” and discuss creative new ways to slide the siphon into your wallet. How much have you spent so far? They don’t want you to think about it. What’s the dollar value of this thing priced in gil? They don’t want you to think about it. Is paying to “skip the grind” the reason there’s a disheartening grind to be skipped? Absofuckinglutely, but they definitely don’t want you to think about it.
Maximum revenue comes from addiction despite misery. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
That isn’t what I said.
Look man, I’m more than willing to have a productive conversation about this. I’ll be here when you’re willing to do the same.
If you meant anything else then you said all the wrong words. I’m not gonna expend more effort on a pile of nuh-uhs, just to rub your nose in how those are, in fact, the thrust of all the things you said, basically blow-by-blow. I’m only stretching a little bit to miss where you nitpicked outright price-gouging and infer you endorsed indie games.
You’re against banning this crap because you insist it can be ethical, and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow, and don’t I know how games are made?
I never said indie games don’t have in-game transactions. In fact, I literally name an indie game that was monetarily successful in large part due to in-game transactions (Battlebits).
I never said “don’t go straight to a solution”. I just suggested less-extreme solutions than “ban the practice completely” (fines, targeted bans).
You’re the one claiming that in-game transactions are innately unethical, not me. And if you think there are no exceptions to your hard-line stance then this conversation won’t go anywhere.
You’re the one claiming my suggestion would be insignificant and ineffectual, when it’s been the standard practice in the business world for decades, and outright bans are left for extreme scenarios.
My point, which I understand to be correct because of my personal experiences with the gaming industry and colleagues that work in the industry, is that adding a cosmetic item to a video game takes a measurable amount of time and effort, which in turn costs money. Putting a price on a good (even a digital one) that requires time and effort to produce is not a scam, and I don’t know how much more clear I can make that.
I’ve literally never mentioned Genshin Impact throughout the entire course of this conversation.
I’ve never claimed that we’ve tried nothing and it worked. I’ve literally admitted that there is a problem, especially with how large, greedy companies like Blizzard do things, and I suggested potential solutions. Again though, they aren’t the same as your solutions, so you’re dismissing them out of hand I guess.
This statement is hyperbolic to the point of insult, and it’s very clear I haven’t suggested anything close to this.
You’re stretching my words beyond all recognition, to the point where it’s becoming hard to figure out what you’re even referencing.
I’m against an outright ban because, as I’ve said from the start, that seems like an extreme overreaction, and yes, it would punish a ton of indie creators who implement ethical in-game transactions to help support their games. I don’t know what you mean by “and your justification is, that’d make the worst people doing it win somehow”. As I’ve said before, I’m in favor of punishing companies who abuse or are predatory with in-game transactions. I don’t want those companies to win. I believe they should be punished, at minimum in the form of fines, and targeted bans if the fines don’t work. I’ve said as much in my first couple messages to you. I’ve also never claimed that you don’t know how games are made. I’ve just called into question your understanding of the time and effort that goes into creating cosmetic items. That’s it.
Hopefully this makes it clear what I’ve been trying to say. Sorry for the original confusion I guess.
All of this is predatory. It’s a trick being played on you. How else do you make some normal-ass game cost thousands of dollars, and still have some idiots pay that? Smaller numbers don’t change anything. Using the trick to get less money is still tricking people out of money.
And that makes ‘but what about ethical uses?’ relevant to me, somehow. Like this conversation can ‘go somewhere’ if I’m condemning this entire practice as fundamentally dishonest exploitation of immutable human vulnerabilities, but you want to play whack-a-mole with specific expressions of that underlying abuse.
Yes.
Oh, you think that’s a counter.
This is half the industry’s profits. That’s pretty fucking extreme. The premise beneath all forms is an abuse of predictable irrationality, much the same way as gambling. (And this abuse may outright involve gambling.)
Pitting any legislature’s ability to pin down and pick apart specific abusive practices, versus the gaming industry’s ability to mutate and adapt those abuses, is very plainly not gonna work. We spent so long bickering about lootboxes that lootboxes went away - and were replaced by even-more-profitable abuses, minus the few details that people recognize as exploitation. If it’s not pay-to-win and it’s not randomized, apparently people don’t give a shit if a “free” game has five thousand dollars worth of waifus and hats. Maybe we’ll fine the company for doing that, because that figure will totes mcgoats outweigh the literal billions they make every single year.
Which misses the point. ‘It deserves money somehow’ does not justify this.
You want money for a new thing? Sell it like regular. Horse Armor that shit. Tell people they can’t have the thing, until they give you money, and only then do you give them the thing. But that’s never what these products do! They’re selling you shit that’s already been added to the game. It goes in every copy. They add stuff, and declare some of it’s suuuper special, and expect five actual dollars to say you have it. Or five hundred. But always disguised as some made-up currency that’s seventeen to the dollar, so you can’t think too hard about how many meals this imaginary geegaw costs, and you can instantly blow that money inside the game. Y’know. Where the developer controls presentation, comparison, context, availability, and literally everything else including fuckin’ gravity. This is not an environment for rational consumer choices. This is an automated con job.
Would it help to point out, the games will often give you shit shit for free, if you play enough? Diablo especially will gladly take real money for additional whacks at a pinata that routinely gives you a few free whacks. Can you imagine asking for cash back instead? Like if some bullshit item is “worth” $30, can you even picture receiving a check from Activision-Blizzard-Microsoft-Atari-Kunkleman-Chevrolet, because you turned it back in? The number on that check is the true value of the thing.
This is the same ‘but games need revenue!’ excuse given to gems, and pay-to-win lootboxes, and… whatever you call being forced to wait half an hour or pay a dollar. No shit games cost money. That’s not an all-purpose excuse for how they take money! The problem is the business model!
It means you think it would punish a ton of indie creators who do this shit, and somehow be a gift to abusive AAA crap - like Genshin Impact, my example. Actual quote: “Banning the business model will kill indie developers, and make the scale of AAA the only way to make profit on video games.”
My guy. Have you seen AAA games lately? They’re the assholes making billions off this bullshit. They’re the morons who can’t turn a profit, without this bullshit. Venture capitalist cult leaders keep gutting beloved studios and making them do “live service” shit, specifically to enable this stupid business model.
The overwhelming majority of indie games have neither the infrastructure nor the back bench necessary to even consider this crap. Your objections are built on the exception to an exception.
Nothing inside a video game should cost money.
I concede, you’re right I’m wrong. Have a great night.